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Play Jacks like a boss
What’s your least favorite hand? If you’re like many players, it might be pocket Jacks. Playing 72o OOP is easy, just muck it. But Jacks are a top 10 premium hand and should win most of the time, shouldn’t it? They’re so scary, someone even created a video on how to play pocket Jacks: How to play JJ – YouTube.
I was sitting at a table when two players were going off on how much they hate getting Jacks. I asked them, what would they rather have, being dealt JJ on every hand or getting a random combo like we normally do in poker. That got me thinking, what if I was dealt pocket Jacks every single hand? What if I became an expert at playing Jacks because that’s all I ever got?
I challenge you, as a mental exercise, to strategize on how you would play JJ in every conceivable situation. Not once, but thousands of hands, over and over again, as deliberate practice. I’ll bet that you will not only become good at playing Jacks but your entire poker game with become better.
Here are a few levers to run through:
1. Position: Think through how you would play Jacks from early, middle, late and from the blinds. What positions are they the easiest to get max value?
2. Aggression: Do you limp with them, open raise, raise over several limpers, or 3-bet with them? How do you play them when you flat call an open raise or call a 3-bet?
3. Based on your opponents: Play them with a passive table of nits, an aggressive player to your right, an aggressive player to your left, a table full of maniacs, a couple of calling stations who love to see flops and show downs, etc.
4. Number of players in the hand: Heads up and multi-way
5. Stack depth: Play your Jacks at a variety of stack depths – 300bb, 100bb, 40bb, 20bb, 15bb, etc. How do you play them in ICM spots?
6. With all the various postflop board textures: How do you play them on dry boards (Q83r), on dynamic boards (987ssd), high boards (AK9), low boards (T72), monochrome boards (T62hhh), when you flop the nuts (J93), etc.
Run the scenarios with all the various combinations. Some examples:
a. Out of position, with an open raise, heads up against an aggressive maniac on the Btn, on a low, static board (T52r).
b. In position, with two loose-passive players, with one over-card and a possible flush draw (QT5dds), with 40bb and 5 players left before the Bubble.
c. In position, with a loose-aggressive player who 3-bet you from the BB on a dynamic low board (985hhc)
This exercise will help you focus on how to improve your game without the distractions of how to play the thousands of card combinations in these same scenarios. You become a master of understanding this game, while playing a good but vulnerable hand.
Some of the things you will learn:
1. The importance of position: Playing Jacks become much easier when you’re playing them from the CO and Btn. They become difficult to play OOP especially when you have aggressive players to your left.
2. Understanding board textures: You will become good at reading board textures and which ones to continue aggressively and which ones to fold. Just because one over card hits the flop does not mean you will be beat.
3. Profiling players: You will become very good at understanding player tendencies and knowing when to attack and when to back off based on the player pool at your table and the individuals based on their position relative to you.
4. Getting out of your comfort zone: Do you ever 3-bet with Jacks? 4-bet? It’s a mental exercise, try various moves with different players from different positions.
5. Developing a strong poker mindset: You’re given a top hand on every hand, and you need to stay focused to quickly evaluate and understand the impacts of how the various levers will impact your continuation strategy. You won’t be distracted by your phone or watching TV. Jacks won’t win most of the time, but you’ll figure out how to maximize the value you get from them.
Once you’ve become a master of playing Jacks, then add the other hands in your playable range – AJo, A5s, KQo, JTs, 87s, AA, QQ, 99, 55, etc. You don’t need to run massive repetitions for each combo. You have already done the hard work. You already know how to play in/out of position, with a variety of players, with a variety of different flops. Just plug in the different hands and determine how the board texture impacts your range and your specific hand.
Mastering Jacks will help you become a better poker player – it will become one of your favorite poker hands.
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2 Replies
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amazing post, @DaChiwaiian thanks for bringing this to the forums! I see our spam filter prevented your YouTube link from being displayed, sorry about that – it’s how we stop bad actors from spamming our forums with links etc.
I just posted these two JJ hands into Kim’s HH review forum (which is just for premium members) but I’ll share them here too since you and I are obviously thinking about the same things – in the first one, I didn’t want to 3-bet the UTG opener so I called instead but I always struggle with which hands to take that line with. The second hand has a very similar flop texture but I raised preflop and am curious what people think about how it affects the dynamic of the hand on later streets.
I was multi-tabling some cash games while doing some paperwork on my other screen so I think I might have done myself a disservice by not playing with focus. Looking forward to seeing what people think about the spots, and how they might have played them instead!
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Yes, I found it difficult to get in the reps to develop a good deliberate practice program since we only get hands like Jacks once every 220 or so hands. This mental exercise has been helpful to think through how I would play them under a variety of situations so I don’t need to wait until I see the hand live to practice it. But more importantly this meditation has helped me to develop focus and preparedness for any playable hand. I found it great to have a feedback loop between how I think I should play the hand, what actually happened when I played it that way and then researched what the books and videos say I should have, or could have, done in that situation, then add it to my mental practice.
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